Walt at Random

These comments apply only to my own situation. For you, Twitter may be wonderful.

Some of you have already figured out that I’m sort of an introvert, with a wide circle of friends and acquaintances but not too many that I strive to keep up with on a minute-by-minute (or week-by-week) basis. That I enjoy getting together with people at ALA (and occasionally other conferences) but don’t go to great pains to make that happen–and am perfectly comfortable dining by myself.

I’m clearly not the world’s greatest social-network participant, by personality or preference. I probably still have an Orkut account and haven’t been back in more than a year. I probably have a Second Life avatar and have no idea what my name or password are. I dropped out of Ning (Library 2.0 and library bloggers) because it just didn’t work for me–I wasn’t able or willing to spend the time there, and its slowness and confused interface didn’t help a lot.

Or at least I think I dropped out of Ning. I haven’t been back to check; for all I know, I may still have a page there. More about that in a bit.

Twitter? In general, I can’t imagine why anyone would care what I’m doing at any given time. But…well, the use of Twitter to get together during a conference seemed at least plausible. And, breaking with my long tradition of traveling entirely without technology, I’d picked up a cheap text-oriented cell phone (with what may be the world’s smallest QWERTY keyboard) on a Virgin Mobile pay-as-you-go basis, with a $10/1,000 text message package…if only so I could contact people I was talking to about future contract or job possibilities. So I thought I’d sign up for Twitter just to see if it would be helpful during ALA. And, after using it (Web-based) a few days prior, cut back “friends” (I’m getting to hate that overused word for people I’ve never met and never really talked to, but who feel some vague connection) to those who I thought would be at ALA.

I didn’t keep the phone on all the time–I just can’t deal with that level of connectedness–but I made a point of checking it at least every hour or two, and did send out Twitters when I was going to be in one place for a while.

My conclusion? For me, for this equipment and service plan, for this type of conference, it’s a flat-out failure. Here’s why:

• One or two of the dozen “friends” was, shall we say, Twitter-happy, with what seemed like an endless flood of little messages. I’m seeing that elsewhere; in one case, where a liblogger is having twitters posted as blog posts, I’m about ready to unsubscribe.
• I don’t know whether it’s Twitter, Virgin Mobile, or the way I was using it, but I got messages in big clumps, sometimes a day or more after they’d been sent. For a while, it appeared that I wouldn’t get any messages until I sent one; I’m still not sure what was actually happening. In any case, this made the tool useless as a “gathering” system: Knowing where someone was yesterday is not real helpful.
• Maybe it’s different at a small or very specialized conference, but there just weren’t any instances in which my “friends” and I had any reason to meet up that Twitter helped with. A lot of that may be because I don’t have that circle of people I want to get together with as often as possible.

The cell phone itself proved useful primarily because of my little 36-hour travel problem (which, after reading Michael Golrick’s ordeal, I realize was only a little problem): It was nice to be able to keep my wife informed without coping with a cell phone, and I even called the airline once or twice to help things along. Naturally, the phone started losing charge halfway through the adventure…

So I came back and immediately set my Twitter account to “web only.” Recharged the phone. Didn’t use it on Thursday. Canceled our Cingular account (which we’d already planned to do). When my wife wanted minimal instructions on the Kyocera/Virgin Mobile phone (we now have two sick cats instead of one, and we’re still not sure what’s going on with the younger one), as soon as I turned it on I started getting a flood of Twitter messages…even though I’d cleared it after resetting the account. I think all the messages were from late Tuesday and the first half of Wednesday; I’m not sure, since I was just deleting them. (For some reason, the phone’s “erase all messages” feature doesn’t actually do anything. I think they’re taking lessons from the social software people.)

Again: for you it may be brilliant. For me it’s the wrong medium, either on the web or on the go–and the last thing I want is various hunks of text that aren’t even real messages from real people!

So here’s the coda, at least for now: I logged on to Twitter, said I wanted to erase my account, went through the “Are you sure?” step, clicked on the appropriate button…

and was taken back to my home page.

Did the process again. Signed out. Was able to sign back in and there’s the same#*!@% home page again.

Sent a help message, basically saying “Is there any way to actually leave Twitter?” We’ll see what response I get.

And this morning, checking email, there’s another new “friend” on Twitter–friending an account that should not even be there.

This seems to be typical of (some) social software applications, and certainly helps them claim very large usage numbers. It’s the Hotel California syndrome–you can check out any time you like, but you can never really leave. I think it stinks; I’m tempted to sue a five-letter word beginning with “f” and ending with “d,” but I won’t for the moment.

If you’re a Twitterer who doesn’t read this blog and you’ve “friended” or “followed” me–well, here’s why you’re not getting any reciprocity. I’m not really there and don’t intend to return. Don’t be insulted. (In any case, why on earth would you be friending me on Twitter if you don’t read my blog?)

If you’re one who does want to follow me both places, I won’t be there; I will be here. (Assuming sick cats, job issues, etc. don’t completely take over my life, which isn’t an entirely safe assumption.)

This post probably makes me sound antisocial. Sorry about that. Fact is, we each have different levels of tolerance for interruption and need for connectedness. I find email, blogs, face-to-face conversations and (for now) Meebo rooms to be connecting at my level. I found Twitter to be enormously distracting and not at all useful, for me, in these circumstances.

I discussed the lead essay in the forthcoming July 2007 Cites & Insights with some of you during ALA, noting that the issue was basically written, just needed a little more trimming and editing, and would probably come out the day after I got back from DC–which, presumably, would be today.

I still hope to publish the issue the day after I get back from DC. But that turns out to be tomorrow. After decades of luck in avoiding snowin during Midwinter, my luck ran out (at least a little bit) with a different sort of weather problem. To wit, I got to San Jose International Airport today at about 1 p.m. PDT–roughly 33.5 hours after leaving the Grand Hyatt in Washington to catch a shuttle to Dulles. I expected to get home around 3 p.m. Tuesday; instead, I got home around 1:30 p.m. Wednesday.

I’m sure some of you have experienced worse–heck, you may even be experiencing worse as I write this. My brief chronology:

• 6:20 a.m. Tuesday 6/26: Shuttle to Dulles, reaching airport at around 7 a.m.
• 9:30 a.m.: American flight to DFW takes off a few minutes early, gets in right on time (11:35 a.m.)
• 12:25 p.m.: I’m at the gate where the American 12:55 p.m. flight to San Jose is supposed to be loading–but it’s now scheduled for departure at something like 1:45 p.m.
• 2 p.m.: The plane (100% full) pulls back from the gate and gets in line for takeoff.
• 3 p.m.: Given rain, progress has been slow, but this flight is now the first in line for westbound takeoff. And westbound takeoffs are shut down. We pull onto a midfield taxiway.
• 6 p.m.: We return to the gate; after four hours of running the plane generators, there’s not enough fuel.
• Everybody on the plane is told to go back out to the ticket counters to rebook. After various attempts at standby or rebooking, I run out of options…along with several hundred others. (The only San Jose flight later than 11:20 a.m. to go out at all is the 3:15 p.m. flight–which departs at around 9:45 p.m., and probably incurred a penalty for violating San Jose’s noise curfew.)
• Even in the first class/Gold/Platinum frequent flyer line–or maybe particularly there–it’s VERY slow going to try to get Wednesday standby or new confirmed seats (everybody’s told that everything’s sold out until Thursday or maybe Friday; this turns out to be either false or intermittently true), and I finally wind up with a baroque confirmed booking (flying to Orange County and from there to San Jose, leaving midafternoon when storms are likely to be troublesome and not getting in until 7:30 p.m.) and a standby boarding pass for the first SJC flight out (7:55 a.m.)
• At this point, getting a hotel room makes very little sense: Everything near the airport is sold out, and the only deals I can find are $200 to $250 plus a $20-$25 30-minute shuttle ride each way. Since it’s now 1 a.m. and I’d obviously need to be back at the airport by 6:30 or so to be there for possible 7:55 a.m. takeoff, that figures to be $300 for about 3 hours of sleep and a shower. Not worth it. So, along with a few hundred others, I head back through security (before it shuts down at 1:30-2 a.m.) to sleep inside the airport (there’s really no place to even sit outside the security area, at least in the American complex). I believe some 600 people couldn’t get standby passes before the ticketing shut down at 1 a.m., and were stuck either going to a hotel or making the best of the outside facilities.
• American did at least one thing right: They invested in a few hundred lightweight foldable cots, so people could do something better than lie on the floor–and they made several hundred blankets available. With such comfort, I probably got an easy 60-90 minutes of something resembling sleep.
• Based on weather forecasts, we were hearing the worst–it might be even worse today and continuing until Sunday. I figured that if the 3:25 flight didn’t get out, I’d give up at that point, get a hotel room, and try for Thursday…
• Fortunately, American’s standby-rollover algorithms are pretty clean (placement is almost entirely based on when your original flight was scheduled to take off). I wind up #15 on standby for the 7:55 a.m. flight–and get real hopeful when they’ve gotten to #11 and I see that 12-14 all have the same last name. Turns out there’s exactly one seat left–but the parents of the teen in the family decide to send him ahead.
• Next flight 10 a.m. This time, I’m #8. Then #9. Then, glory be, #4. The flight’s delayed (but mostly preboarding, then a little because of catering), but I get on, the weather seems to be holding at overcast–and at 11:15 (I think) we pull back. As promised, once we’re past the Sangre de Cristo mountains, it’s a pretty smooth ride (and the $5 turkey/shaved parmesan/turkey ham/lettuce wrap isn’t half bad, actually).

So there it is: My 24 hours (almost precisely) at DFW. Right now, I’m running nearly on empty, with no real deep sleep for a day and a half. This could clearly have been a lot worse. OK, so they didn’t feed us (except first class) or give us free drinks during the four hours, but the lights and air conditioning were on, the johns were functioning, and it was clearly a legitimate weather problem, not an airline issue. (They did provide water or orange juice after a couple of hours.) Four hours isn’t seven; some people spent two days getting through DFW, not just one.

Odd. My wife suggested that maybe I was getting too old for the outbound flights–American Eagle to LAX midafternoon on Thursday, June 22, followed by the red-eye from LAX to Dulles, But even in coach, I did get 2-3 hours reasonably decent sleep on that flight–and Grand Hyatt gave me my room at 6:15 when I got to the hotel, so I could crash for a few more hours. This was my first experience “sleeping” in an airport; I hope it will be my last. Maybe I am getting too old for that sort of nonsense. Maybe not.

So, maybe I’ll have C&I ready tomorrow. Maybe Friday. Maybe not. I think it’s a good issue, with a section on copyright, a Library Access to Scholarship piece, another chunk of Making it Work, a couple of other features–and a lead essay that I’ve already mentioned to a few people. Soon.

I may post later about why Twitter-during-conference really didn’t work for me, for ALA. I might post about other things…

Meanwhile, a little thought experiment (“picture in your mind’s eye”) that may say something about the underwhelming success of a revolutionary mode of transport.

Picture in your mind’s eye half a dozen really cool people. Let’s say Halle Berry, Will Smith, George Clooney, Angelina Jolie, Bruce Willis–I don’t know. Choose your own.

Line them up. What a spectacle of coolness!

Now put them all on Segways and get them moving.

What do you have? Dorks on Parade.

At least most of the security guards at the DC Convention Center didn’t have the “I love this Segway because it means I don’t use up any of those doughnut calories” look I’ve seen in some other cases of “official Segway” use–but still…

And that’s it for a highly unofficial and inconsequential ALA post that at least says why I’m a little slow with some other things. If the above is a little less coherent than usual, you can guess why.

Suppressing the “bah humbugs” for now…

Since I picked up a text-oriented cell phone in time for ALA (but it will mostly be off, and only people I’ve arranged to meet with will get the number), and

Since I said in COAP2 that “I think Twitter was made for conferences” even if you’re not the kind who would normally be twittering up a storm (see pages 4 & 5), well, then, to follow my own advice…

I have a Twitter account. waltcrawford: What did you expect? I have notifications set to web-only, but I’ll turn them back to phone notifications before I leave for ALA Annual. If you think you’ll want to know where I’m likely to be, or want to set up a meeting, maybe you want to follow me (I barely understand this stuff–heck, I got the reply and all that for phone verification, but the verification screen still shows up). I guess you’re supposed to invite me as a friend if you think I should be tracking your activities there–is that right?

And if you do want to meet (for job offers or whatever), let me know. I do plan to check the phone periodically, even if I’m still too “disconnected” by nature to leave it on all the time. And that teeny little QWERTY keyboard isn’t wonderful, but it works OK with one finger. (Too small for thumbing–I wasn’t about to pay for a Blackberry-equivalent.) Send me email–waltcrawford at gmail.com.

Actually, I think the fastest way to “follow” me involves “waltcrawford1″ as a user ID. Again, I’m not entirely sure…

Update: I believe that if you have a Twitter account, sending the message follow WALTCRAWFORD1 (case may or may not matter) will add you to my list. I will send at least one message in the next few days, if only to make sure that my phone really does send them properly.

Update 2, a day later: This is mysterious stuff, and I’m beginning to think that’s par for free web services. Yesterday afternoon (Tuesday), I decided that I really should send one Twitter from my cell phone to make sure that the setup work had all gone properly–even though I had gotten a text reply (well, two of them) that suggested all was well.

Sent the message. Checked Twitter 5 minutes, then half an hour later. No message. Retried the setup confirmation again. Tried a message. No message… Did this a couple of times.

Finally clicked on the “Delete and start over” button. Entered my cell # in slightly different form–even though the responses had been, apparently, correct with the other form. (Prepended”+1″ this time; it’s just not clear whether U.S. users need that.) Texted the (new) authentication string again.

Two things happened differently: The reply from Twitter did not ask me for a nickname/username, and the (new) authentication string disappeared from the setup screen.

Well, that looks promising, sez I. So I text one more Twitter from the cell phone. Ten seconds later, there it is on my home page (and presumably on the pages of seven followers and that person who is apparently a Follower for every Twitter account).

Great! I’m set. Wasted a buck or so worth of messages, but that’s OK. (Actually, I went ahead and signed up for the $10/1000 message “per month” plan for ALA, and will drop back to the nickel-a-piece messaging in July. I can’t imagine getting and receiving anywhere close to 1,000 messages during the conference, but can conceivably imagine hitting 200+. Or 10, as the case may be.)

Here’s where it gets a little bizarre: A few minutes later, checked my archive–and there were all the other messages, including the repeated verification string. And a while later, the “friends” screen showed all those other messages as well.

Conclusions? None, really. My apologies to the seven people getting six or eight odd messages. For now, I’m “add”ing anyone who follows me–but I’ll turn off some of them (temporarily) before I switch from Web-only to Phone for notifications, based on whether I think it likely that they’ll be at ALA.

Enough blather about twitter.

Two posts back, I did a semi-random semi-blind (I just wrote “semi-bland,” and that’s true too) post lamenting my inability to “get” the greatness that so many other libloggers were seeing in a five-minute video.

Which I deliberately didn’t link to, as I didn’t feel the need to give it yet more link love.

Since then, three things have happened:

1. Lots more libloggers (and others) have acclaimed the video in question. I’m clearly in the minority on this one.
2. The semi-blind post, which I expected to be ignored as all good blind posts should be, yielded a really wonderful set of comments–one of which did include the link (which is OK), and a couple of which yielded plausible reasons why I don’t get this particular video.
3. The eminent David Rothman–this David Rothman, that is–linked to this five-minute video. (I’m new at this video linking stuff. If that doesn’t work, here’s Rothman’s post with the video embedded..

This one I get. I was just watching the wrong video.

For some reason, I happened to be perusing past posts at the Other AL and ran across a comment cluster connected to the OCLC Bloggers Salon [one o, not two!] at Midwinter. You’ll find it down the page, right around here. Open the comments.

Now, having been at the Bloggers Salon (hey, there’s photographic evidence), I would comment:

• What would possibly lead AL to believe that AL’s presence at the Salon would be frowned upon? Don’t say “politics”–I heard precious few political discussions, and most libloggers don’t let politics dominate their posts. AL falls into that “most” category, near as I can tell.
• How would we know if AL was there, since AL’s been exceptionally good at pseudonymity?

Others who were there might respond to part of that first bullet by noting that I might not have heard most of what was being said. For a few minutes after the Laugh Heard ‘Round the World, I couldn’t hear anything out of the nearest ear…and the noise level in general, up until 10 pmish, was pretty ferocious.

A good time was had by all, or at least all I’m aware of. No fisticuffs. No stark confrontations (that I could hear). Given the competition (offering more free food and more scenic surroundings) Saturday night, a pretty good crowd.

Running out of, that is. At least as far as non-reflexive posts hereabouts is concerned.

It’s been two weeks since the last post that wasn’t either about Cites & Insights or Walt at Random. I guess this post doesn’t break that fast. (Today? Nature Valley apple cinnamon crunch bars, half a toasted multigrain bagel, calcium-enriched “lots of pulp” Tropicana orange juice, Kauai coffee [Trader Joe's]. Why do you ask?)

Why? Partly Midwinter. (In case there’s anyone out there who didn’t figure this out already, all but one word of Cites & Insights 7:2 was written and edited before Midwinter, and that word was actually a number.) I don’t blog during a conference (“I travel without technology”–didn’t even take my portable CD player this time around) and didn’t have all that much to say when I got back.

Partly job-related. Partly a cold (no sympathy desired: it just slowed me down for a few days and resulted in two half-days at home sleeping). Partly writing some stuff for C&I 7:3. Partly that, depending on various eventualities, some of the things I might be posting about might turn into other kinds of output, possibly at work. [Parse that sentence and win the right to say you're a better grammarian than I am.]

And a whole bunch writing draft chapters for an increasingly-probable book. Twelve down, three to go.

Thanks for all the kind words on the two rough-draft chapters some of you have read, even though you didn’t know they were rough-draft chapters when you read them.

In other words, I just haven’t had sufficiently interesting randomness to note here.

Hmm. Exactly two months to the two-year anniversary. Will I 500 posts or two years first? At this rate, probably the latter.

I know this email stuff is awfully advanced technology, but:

I got email to renew my membership today. At my work email address — well, actually at my old work email address, which is apparently one of several aliases for my current work email address (crawforw@oclc.org, if you’re wondering, although the business cards have the formal alias Walt_Crawford@oclc.org).

So I click on the link (still not happy about LITA’s $60 or thrilled about ALA’s $110, but not ready to quit just yet either). And find that the password autoprovided isn’t the password I currently use. Fine; I click on the appropriate button and ALA emails my password.

To my gmail address. Which, now that I think about it, is what I told ALA I want to use for email.

So, fine, I log in and renew–it’s a strange cumbersome set of links, first to this page then back to that page then over to another page, but not too difficult–and it all finishes by saying it will email confirmation.

Which it does. To my old work email address.

Now that I think about it, I also changed my postal mail preferences to get stuff at home. So, of course, it’s still arriving at work. Except for the things that arrive at home.

I’m all for diversity–but maybe not in actually executing the preference changes that you invite people to do. Is proliferating an email address driven off a single membership number really that difficult? Is that what ALA needs the extra bucks for?

Dr. Kilgour, founder of OCLC (among other things), died yesterday. The obituary is here (that page also has a link to a forum where people can leave their own observations).

I was barely acquainted with Dr. Kilgour (and certainly never knew him nearly well enough to dream of calling him “Fred”). I’m part of the second generation of library automation; Dr. Kilgour was part of the first generation. (I was also nowhere near at the level of importance where I’d be rubbing elbows with Dr. Kilgour under normal circumstances!)

The only significant in-person memory I have is of the LITA President’s Program at the 1993 ALA Annual Conference. I’m sure it was 1993, because I was LITA President at the time, and the program celebrated LITA’s 25th anniversary by having three former LITA presidents speak–well, actually, they were all ISAD presidents (Information Science and Automation Division), because the name change to LITA didn’t happen that far back.

The speakers:

• Steve Salmon, the very first president, 1966-67. [Sticklers will note that this means the 25th Anniversary program was a year late. Sticklers will be correct. These things happen.]
• Barbara E. Markuson, 1979-1980.
• Frederick Kilgour, 1973-1975, the only LITA / ISAD president ever to serve a two-year term (as I remember, this was because the person who would have been president when Dr. Kilgour was Vice President / President-elect became the division’s Executive Director instead).

In a poignant note, the VP when Kilgour was president, and president in 1975-76, was Henriette Avram, whose death shortly before this year’s ALA Annual Conference sparked tributes at the LITA 40th Anniversary Past President’s Breakfast.

I certainly met Dr. Kilgour at that point; I’m not sure whether I’d ever met him before. Meeting him was a pleasure and an honor.

Unfortunately, I don’t remember much about the speech. Due to medical and scheduling issues, the agreement was that speakers would only come up to the podium as they were speaking–but I was sitting on the podium, the lone occupant at a table, paying attention throughout the three speeches. And, of course, not taking notes. I do remember that Dr. Kilgour was warmly received (as were all three speakers).

The field will miss him.

I didn’t attend the ACRL debate on information literacy. Several of those who did have had snarky things to say about it, apparently well deserved. Here’s a follow-up to an earlier post about the session at A Wandering Eyre–not to pick on Jane, but because she writes well and garnered some interesting comments. (The debate’s been debated elsewhere…)

I did go to the LITA debate on the future of search. And left after 15 minutes…

And then recalled that I’ve turned down more than one speaking invitation for a debate format, after accepting one such invitation (one of only three speeches I’ve done that I regard as failures).

I’m less hard-nosed than some. I’ll be on a panel, as long as it’s not a cry-and-response panel, and I’ve been the speaker being responded to by a panel (and don’t much care for it, not because I don’t like disagreement but because I don’t like being required to write a speech in advance and stick with what I wrote…but that requirement is almost essential for responders to work effectively).

The more I think about it, the more I think I just don’t care for debates as content programs. As carnivals/sideshows, sure; bring on the powdered wigs and gongs to cut off the speakers at the 3-minute mark. Cheer, boo, throw vegetables: Just don’t think you’re communicating meaning or changing anyone’s mind.

Actually, for me, this should come as no surprise. I was never a football player (as anyone who’s seen me could guess), but I spent four years in the NFL–the National Forensic League, that is. That’s the high school public speaking association, a good place for geeks like me to spend weekends. I “topped out” point eligibility in debate, impromptu, and extemp, which means I did a lot of debating. And what struck me as the years went on was that NFL debate is a great way to train value-neutral lawyers: That is, you’re required to be equally effective in arguing for and against a set proposition. Crucial to doing that is not believing either side. (One year, I used the same very effective anecdote on both sides of the same issue. That was the year I realized that treating debate as anything other than a stunt was demeaning my personal ethical sense.)

Maybe it’s just me, but maybe not. Disagreement can be good. Serious discussion can, rarely, change minds: I’ve changed my mind thanks to informed discussion. But debates? I think they’re artificial, tend to force extreme positions, and are valuable only as entertainment, not when there’s something serious to be said. At least that’s been my recent experience.

[Not that anyone was planning to in any case, but I guess this serves as a warning that you shouldn't invite me to participate in a debate. I'll turn you down.]

I probably shouldn’t write at all until at least yesterday, since I’m now 15 hours into the “travel day” and just skimmed through 458 library blog posts and 150 others (and, surprisingly, only flagged a dozen to look at again later–but I’d say at least 100 of those posts are repetitions because of Bloglines or blogging software glitches).

Still, before I forget, in no particular order, and with zero cosmic significance:

• There is no Ten in the LITA Top Tech Trends. I’ve seen that extraneous word in at least two blogs. It’s TTT: Top Tech Trends. Not TTTT.
• The time given for each TTT panelist was decided, at Midwinter, by the TTT committee and the TTT panelists. I wasn’t there. I was just The Enforcer. (Actually, a one-minute sign and a red “time up” sign were being held up in the front row of the audience–but I quickly realized that the panelists couldn’t see the signs. Too bad. I really was hoping not to say anything after summarizing Sarah Houghton’s trends…). I think five minutes is probably about right; in this case, it was literally the only way to save half an hour for managed audience questions. I think the managed-questions portion went very well (as did the whole thing, and since I’m no longer a panelist, I can say that): Most questions were included, while avoiding diatribes. (And I must apologize to Sarah: I left out “brighter” in the range of adjectives that distinguish the LiB from the bozo offering her trends.)
• I wonder whether we’ll ever have an accurate number for how many people were at ALA–which is not necessarily the same as the registration count. Exhibits felt light; my hotel noted that a number of people had cancelled at the last minute; I wouldn’t be surprised if a thousand or more people just didn’t show up. Why? Because of the “lift” problem I noted pre-conference: There just weren’t enough airplane seats on the key travel days. I know of people paying $700 for flights booked more than a month ahead, $900 for flights booked fairly well ahead–and of one person being quoted $3,000 for a coach seat a week ahead. I can say that a $900 fare would have increased my total conference expenses by nearly 50%; for a lot of people, the extra $300 to $600 or more–or just the inability to book a flight at all without staying late or going in early–may have prevented attendance.
• That said, there were still probably at least 15,000 librarians and vendors in New Orleans, and I believe most of us found attendance worthwhile. I wouldn’t have missed it…
• Apologies in general to people who might have expected to run into me and didn’t. Thanks to a combination of factors–the strain of the last couple months, four or five days of pre-ALA weather in Mountain View where the lack of air conditioning made 92 to 96 degrees difficult to bear, getting a really bad night’s [lack of] sleep Friday night, the effect of the front half of the Convention Center being closed–I was just plumb exhausted by mid-day Saturday, and took what measures I could to protect energy. That meant spending less time at social functions and marginal (for me) programs than I might otherwise have, definitely not trying to stay up for the 10:30-midnight blogger/Louisiana librarian gathering, skipping a couple of kind invitations to fancy dinners that would keep me up too late… and generally laying a little bit low.
• I’m grateful to all the folks who asked how things were going in terms of OCLC-RLG and my future. I think the short answer “It’s probably going to be all good, personally at least,” is better than the slightly longer answers I was giving. [OK, I might not word it exactly that way, but, well...]
• And, given that cheap entertainment playing slot poker was one way to preserve a little energy and sanity, I should report that Harrah’s New Orleans has good music–I’m guessing it’s more or less the same blend of oldies used in other Harrah’s, but with every third or fourth song replaced by something local (songs about New Orleans, zydeco music, songs by other NO musicians, etc.). And, unlike some casinos last time we were in Reno, the music wasn’t playing SO LOUD IT HURT YOUR EARS.
• Sure, I went to some programs. Sure, I toured all of the exhibits. Maybe I’ll have something to say about them later–but seems like lots of other people are covering things pretty well. (Cop out? You betcha.)

Oh, and I have to mention the LITA breakfast for 23 of the former presidents, as part of the division’s 40th anniversary celebration. (LITA isn’t 40 years old, but the division is: It originally had a different name, Information Science and Automation Division or ISAD.) Great stuff, and a good chance to see a bunch of people I really don’t run into that often.

Added next day: It probably isn’t obvious from the above, although my pre-conference posts may have hinted at it, but:

• Keeping ALA in New Orleans was exactly the right thing to do. Exactly. I believed it when the decision was made. I believed it after the misreported story about killings in a drug-infested area of New Orleans. And I believed it even more while I was there, starting with the cabbie who, while grumping a little about ALA’s proficiency at sending people to the airport shuttles, expressed delight at us being there (his house is “OK,” but his furnishings were a total loss)–and all the way through.
• Despite all the wonderful voluntarism, donations to NOPL funds, “over”tipping, ALA wasn’t there as a charity operation. We were there as a conference, with conferees having the usual good time in and after events. (“The usual good time” for NO being a little different than “the usual good time” for, say, Orlando.)
• As I commented on John Blyberg’s first-rate post-ALA note: We did good. New Orleans did good.